Thomas-Alexandre Dumas

Thomas-Alexandre Dumas (25 March 1762-26 February 1806) was a Divisional General of the French Republic during the French Revolutionary Wars and the highest-ranking man of color to command a European army. His son Alexandre Dumas wrote The Three Musketeers.

Biography
Thomas-Alexandre Dumas was born on 25 March 1762 in Jeremie, Saint-Domingue, France (present-day Haiti) to Marquis Alexandre Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie and his African slave Marie-Cessette. In 1776 his father took him to France, where it was illegal to hold slaves since 1315; upon arriving, he was immediately free of slavery. He was educated and entered the French Army in 1786, but fought for the French Revolutionary Army and was the commander of the 53,000-strong Army of the Alps by 1793 at the age of 31 during the French Revolutionary Wars. Dumas was loved by Napoleon Bonaparte, who called him the "Horatius Cocles of the Tyrol" due to his forcing open of the Austrian mountain passes during the Siege of Mantua, and he later commanded the cavalry of the French during the Egypt Campaign of 1798. However, he clashed verbally with Napoleon on the march to Cairo and in 1799 he was sent to a dungeon in the Kingdom of Naples. He was imprisoned until 1801 and died of stomach cancer in 1806 in Villers-Cotterets, Picardy, France.